Getting off with your lover
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Wicky Tse sent in the following photograph of a sign in the Xujiahui district of Shanghai:
The topmost wording reads:
Xújiāhuì pàichūsuǒ 徐家汇派出所
("Xujiahui local police station")
Next comes five big characters and a large comma:
huāqián yuèxià shí 花前月下時,
("when [you're] in front of the flowers and beneath the moon,")
That is followed by this warning:
qǐng zhùyì nǐ de kuàbāo 请注意你的挎包
("please pay attention to your purse / shoulder bag")
Probably every native speaker of English who reads the first English clause ("When you are getting off with your lover") will do a double-take. If they could read the equivalent Chinese, they would be even more dumbfounded.
The expression "huāqián yuèxià" 花前月下 ("in front of the flowers and beneath the moon") derives from a heptasyllabic quatrain entitled " Lǎo bìng" 老病 ("Old and Ill") by the famous Tang poet Bo Juyi 白居易 (772-846), the first two lines of which read:
Zhòu tīng shēnggē yè zuì mián, ruòfēi yuè xià jí huā qián
昼听笙歌夜醉眠， 若非月下即花前。
By day listening to music and song, by night in a drunken sleep;
If not beneath the moon, then in front of the flowers.
Abbreviated as "huāqián yuèxià" 花前月下 ("in front of the flowers and beneath the moon"), this line has become a chéngyǔ 成語 ("set phrase" [often rendered as "idiom" or "proverb"]) indicating an ideal setting for a couple in love.
"Huāqián yuèxià" 花前月下 ("in front of the flowers and beneath the moon") is not the only Chinese expression that yields the Chinglish translation "getting off". Witness this road sign (from China-Mike.com):
The sign actually says:
zhǐ zhǔn línshí tíngchē xiàkè 只准臨時停車下客
Temporary stopping only to unload passengers.
Johnny said,
October 13, 2013 @ 10:01 pm
"Getting off" is fairly common (though colloquial) in British English, meaning "smooching".
I'd never seen the expression 花前月下 before, but it seems like a nice euphemism.
Iamaom said,
October 13, 2013 @ 10:08 pm
Ah, so that's what the banning of Chinglish signs was about.
SlideSF said,
October 14, 2013 @ 12:47 am
These days I take the expression "to get off" as " to climax or orgasm", and I think that's the general understanding. But back in the late 1960s I was a young teenager and hearing the expression for the first time. It was new to me both because of my age and lack of worldly experience, and also because my family had moved from suburban Midwestern USA to urban East Africa. I don't think the expression was common in the US at that time, but in Kenya then it meant "to make out", as in "snogging your bird". It was only decades later (I believe) that the current meaning became prevalent in American English.
But I also have to wonder to what extent naivete and unfamiliarity with the language play a part in my understanding of the change in meaning of that expression. For instance, my Grandfather always used the expression "make love to" as meaning " to woo or court", whereas nowadays almost everybody takes it to mean "to have sex with" in a somewhat cheesy or possibly romantic way. But I wonder; did my Grandfather's understanding of the expression reflect common usage from an earlier time or was it colored by his more conventional/conservative view of sexual mores?
michael farris said,
October 14, 2013 @ 1:00 am
"my Grandfather always used the expression "make love to" as meaning " to woo or court", whereas nowadays almost everybody takes it to mean "to have sex with" in a somewhat cheesy or possibly romantic way."
I'm still trying to process 'have sex with in a somewhat cheesy…way'.
I think sex meaning had taken over by the 70's at the latest I remember happening across the term in older books with your grandfather's meaning and being confused until I figured out that the meaning must have changed.
isel said,
October 14, 2013 @ 1:29 am
As a BrE speaker 'get off with' is a term that we used in school in the 90s to mean to kiss so it sounds odd in the sign because of the register shift but not because of any sexual meaning. In that sense I only know 'get off ON sth' which would indicate sth that so finds sexually arousing
Brian O'Connor said,
October 14, 2013 @ 1:57 am
In Ireland "getting off" is slang for kissing. In this context it has the same meaning as "making out" in American English.
To my eyes the translation makes perfect sense given the picture.
Ken MacDougall said,
October 14, 2013 @ 1:59 am
In Glasgow at least, and I'm sure in most of Scotland, everyone would agree that the couple in the photo are getting off with each other. 'Snogging' would be the BE equivalent and 'making out' AE. We also use the term 'winching' but that is dying out.
TJL said,
October 14, 2013 @ 2:40 am
"SlideSF" wrote
"But I wonder; did my Grandfather's understanding of the expression reflect common usage from an earlier time or was it colored by his more conventional/conservative view of sexual mores?"
Almost certainly a (common or at least not exactly rare) usage from an earlier time. I've come across old Mickey Mouse cartoons in which Mickey loudly declares his intention to make love to Minnie. Needless to say, double-takes ensued only on the reader's part.
Rohan F said,
October 14, 2013 @ 4:48 am
SlideSF:
But I also have to wonder to what extent naivete and unfamiliarity with the language play a part in my understanding of the change in meaning of that expression. For instance, my Grandfather always used the expression "make love to" as meaning " to woo or court", whereas nowadays almost everybody takes it to mean "to have sex with" in a somewhat cheesy or possibly romantic way. But I wonder; did my Grandfather's understanding of the expression reflect common usage from an earlier time or was it colored by his more conventional/conservative view of sexual mores?
It reflected common usage from an earlier time. There are a few Marx Brothers movies that mention making love ("But for you I'd make love to a crocodile." – A Day at the Races, 1937; "Is he a detective, a floorwalker, or a poet?" "All three, and not bad at making love, eh, Martha?" – The Big Store, 1941) and the strictures of Hollywood at the time were such that if it had meant having sex, then it would never have got near the screen.
Make love at Wiktionary, for what it's worth.
postageincluded said,
October 14, 2013 @ 5:29 am
I'd say that in England "getting off" lost the meaning "kissing" in the 70's as Michaels Farris says. It seems to me that it now implies a casual sexual encounter, but viewed as a more friendly mutual experience than "pulling".
I don't think the general meaning in the UK is "orgasm". "We got off but I didn't come" makes perfect sense in English English. If SlideSF is right to say the US meaning is "orgasm" and that this is a recent usage in the US, then in crossing the pond the meaning has been made more specific. Someone write a thesis on the diffusion of sexual slang, please.
To raise the tone, from 1942, here is Stevie Smith's poem "Conviction IV":
Paolo said,
October 14, 2013 @ 7:32 am
Getting off in the second sign made me think of Kiss & Ride ("a car park at a railway station, airport, etc. for the dropping off and picking up of passengers").
postageincluded said,
October 14, 2013 @ 7:47 am
I should add to my remarks that I first heard"getting off" used to mean a sexual encounter in gay context. Isel was using it for "kissing" in school in the 90s, and that meaning continues in Scotland according to Ken McDougall, so the gay usage seems to have failed to penetrate all parts of UK english as yet…
Jerry Friedman said,
October 14, 2013 @ 8:43 am
"Get off" definitely meant "have orgasm" in Ohio when I learned it in the mid or late '70s, and I connect it with "bring off", "jack off", the British phrase "have it off", etc. I took "get off on something" as a metaphor comparing various kinds of pleasure to sexual pleasure.
Given what people are saying about the meaning in Britain, I'll have to reexamine a quotation from the British poet Rosamond Lehmann (which a biography of Ian Fleming says she borrowed from the Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen): "The trouble with Ian is that he gets off with women because he can't get on with them."
Captain Bringdown said,
October 14, 2013 @ 12:36 pm
A slightly more recent example of "to make love" meaning to court or woo is the Eddy Arnold song (made most famous by Ray Charles in the early 60's) "You Don't Know Me."
Zubon said,
October 14, 2013 @ 12:44 pm
A Midsummer Night's Dream Act I, Scene I:
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena
Patrick Cox said,
October 14, 2013 @ 3:29 pm
In the early eighties in my BrE circles, "getting off" with someone meant kissing (and perhaps kissing plus), but only if this was the first time you were engaging in this activity with this person. Should the pair of you subsequently engage in a repeat bout, you couldn't call it "getting off." I suppose it just wasn't special enough the second time.
As distracting as snogging on a bench may be, getting off with someone is going to require much more of your focus. It would be the perfect moment for someone to snitch your bag.
Rubrick said,
October 14, 2013 @ 4:31 pm
I suspect I'm not unique in having first learned of the older "flirt" meaning of "make love" when, as a youth, I encountered this rather startling passage in C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, the third book of the Chronicles of Narnia:
She made love to everyone – the grooms, the porters, the housemaids, the ladies-in-waiting, and the elderly giant lords whose hunting days were past.
I've often been curious at what point (presumably in the sixties) this phrase shifted meaning in popular song lyrics, and whether it happened at different times on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Ken Brown said,
October 14, 2013 @ 5:59 pm
What Patrick wrote. To me (50-something, SE England) "getting off" with someone is an initial sexual encounter, especially at a party or some social event. It doesn't imply how far you go. So "X got off with Y at the office Christmas party" might be that they spent the night together, or it might be kissing and cuddling in the corner, or it might be that they chastely exchaged phone numbers and started seeing each other.
Bobbie said,
October 14, 2013 @ 9:55 pm
"They became lovers in the old-fashioned sense, AND MADE LOVE IN THE OLD-FASHIONED SENSE. Their idea of making love was to kiss in the dark under the olive tree after curfew, or sit on a rock watching for dolphins through his binoculars…."
[Caps added for emphasis by me.]
From "Corelli's Mandolin" written in 1994 by Louis de Bernieres.
Eorrfu said,
October 15, 2013 @ 2:28 am
As I was thinking about how Americans of my age (30ish) generally use "get off" I am having trouble recalling if it is ever used in the literal sense of orgasming. Asking someone if theu "got off" sounds fine but I find it awkward to construct a scenario where it works.
The vast majority of the time "get off" seems to mean to derive sexual pleasure from. It also usually has a slightly derogatory sense where it seems to imply the sexual pleasure is deviant, inappropriate, or just weird.
Jon said,
October 15, 2013 @ 2:43 am
The alternative meanings of "make love to" were around in the 1940s. One of George Orwell's novels (Keep the aspidistra flying?) had a conversation between a couple, something like: "I want to make love to you." "But we are making love." "You know what I mean."
Thomas said,
October 15, 2013 @ 4:55 am
There's also a reference in Lewis's The Last Battle to the sound of cats making love on the roof at night. I have seen prudish reviewers express their shock at this.
mollymooly said,
October 15, 2013 @ 7:08 am
I guess all informal expressions for parasexual activity are prone to semantic drift along the axis of degree of passion (or, in US parlance, base number). The verb "to score" is another instance.
This is not just because of changing sexual mores, but also because the prime users of such terms are adolescents, whose conversations about the issues in question are filtered through layers of confusion, misconception, obfuscation, braggadocio, and myth.
Graeme said,
October 16, 2013 @ 5:43 am
Perhaps there should be an ISO sign for this?
Say one depicting an amorous couple, one more attentive to their belongings than their interplay.
Eneri Rose said,
October 16, 2013 @ 9:47 am
Captain Bringdown,
According to Wikipedia, "You Don't Know Me" was written by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold in 1955. It seems to me they copied the lyrics from Rodgers & Hammerstein II's "If I Loved You" from the 1945 musical "Carousel": "Longing to tell you but afraid and shy
I'd let my golden chances pass me by."
James said,
October 16, 2013 @ 7:07 pm
"Remember, when the nuns tell you to beware of the deceptions of men who make love to you, that the mind of man is on the whole less tortuous when he is love-making than at any other time. It is when he speaks of governments and armies that he utters strange and dangerous nonsense to please the bats at the back of his soul. This is all to your disadvantage, for in love-making you might meet him with lies of equal force, but there are few repartees that the female governed can make to the male governors."
—Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Robin said,
October 17, 2013 @ 1:20 am
"'We got off but I didn't come' makes perfect sense in English English."
How funny. To me (a 20-something American), that's as semantically anomalous as "I killed him but he didn't die."
Paul said,
October 18, 2013 @ 7:09 pm
I'll go with the majority of the east-of-the-Atlantic comments – this struck me as a very precisely-worded sign in a rather unexpected register.
I was then somewhat surprised at the author's comment underneath that "Probably every native speaker of English who reads the first English clause ("When you are getting off with your lover") will do a double-take," which seemed rather strong – until I read the first explanations of what the phrase means in US English.